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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1989-05-10, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1989. Opinion Just be honest Back during the election Don Blenkarn, Progressive Conservative M.P. caused a storm in his own party when he said the proposed Federal Sales Tax would mean a $10 billion windfall for the government. Denials were quick from the very top: Prime Minister Mulroney, who said the amount was “out of line’’ with government calculations. So what figures did the government release last week: estimates that by the time the tax is fully in place in 1991, it will produce $10 billion more than the current tax is generating. Faced with the huge deficit this may be good planning by the government but why didn’t Mr. Mulroney have the honesty to admit it in the first place? Why for once can’t the man just come clean. Turner's tragedy ends The biggest tragedy about John Turner’s decision to step down as leader of the federal Liberal party is that it came two years too late. Mr. Turner had been cynically selected by Liberal party leadership convention delegates in 1984 because they thought he was the man most likely to keep up the party’s winning streak. Instead he turned out to be a disaster for both the party and the country. In five years on the job he had only one shining moment, when he rose to the challenge of the Free Trade debate in the last election campaign and for the first time managed to make people think he could really believe in something. Even then the irony is that with any other leader but John Turner, the Liberals may well have won the election and defeated Free Trade. Hopefully Mr. Turner’s horrendous five years have not been wasted. Hopefully Liberal supporters will see that despite their cynicism, image isn’t all that wins in politics, that a handsome face and a strong jaw and a glint in the eye aren’t really what people vote for. Despite the power of television, people still want leaders who believe in something, who have a sense of the direction in which they want to take the country in. Mr. Turner got the party in trouble because he kept looking for the winning edge instead of standing up for something he believed in. He seemed to want to lean to the right but when he saw there weren’t enough votes there and when he found his party wasn’t behind him, heswirvedtoa more traditional Liberal ground. But the voters couldn’t be convinced. He got his party in the most trouble when he was afraid of being outflanked by the Conservatives and NDP over the Meech Lake agreement and so supported the nationalists in Quebec in refusing to go against the pact. The move has split the party and left discontented voters both inside and outside Quebec no where to go. It has also reversed 50 years of his party’s attempt to make all French Canadians feel part of the country, notjustapartofaQuebec with special status. So now the Liberals must choose a new leader but already they are showing signs of inviting another catastrophe. You hear people saying that they can’t look to the past but must forge a new course. The problem is the Canadian people have never really rejected what the Liberal party stood for: they simply rejected Mr. Turner as an unreliable spokesman for that message. The Libera Is. if they want to win again, must choose a man or woman who gives people confidence that there is a rock-bottom belief in certain standards. Canadians have had enough cynicism in the last few years. They need something and someone to believe in. Poor rich London The difficulty any government has in cutting expenses is shown by the furore the proposed closing of CFB London has brought. Statistics published last week show that London has a miniscule employment rate of three per cent, lower than even Toronto yet Londoners are screaming about the terrible blow to their economy the base closing will be. One London politician even suggested the government should have cut social programs rather than close their army base. The people really to feel sorry for are the communities like Summerside Prince Edward Island or Portage La Prairie, Manitoba where there aren’t lots of other job opportunities. If London can’t afford to pull in its belt a bit and absorb the cost of government cost cutting, who can? Certainly not those parts of the country where cutting social services really would hurt people. The Citizen P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. NOG 1H0 Phone 887-9114 Growth and decay Mabel’s Grill There are people who will tell you that the important decisions in town are made down at the town hall. People in the know, however know that the real debates, the real wisdom reside down at Mabel s Grill where the greatest minds in the town [if not in the country] gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering So­ ciety. MONDAY: Billie Bean says he’s excited about this talk of unlimited electrical power through nuclear fusion. The thing that was really great about it was that while all these researchers were running around trying to make it happen with multi-million dollar lab equip­ ment, the two guys who did it used a dishpan and electrodes of plati­ num and palladium. Billie said he might have done it too if he’d known what palladium was. He thought it was a theatre in London, England. Hank Stokes said he didn’t know much about nuclear fusion but he could have given a recipe for unlimited energy himself from political fusion. You just put a Liberal, a Tory and an NDPer in a closed room with one voter and watch them instantly fuse their policies trying to get his vote. It doesn’t produce much light but it sure makes for a lot of heat. TUESDAY: Ward Black had to admit that the one thing that really hurt in the budget cuts was the closing of all those army bases. Before we couldn’t defend our­ selves against Cuba if it wanted to invade, he said, but now we’d have a tough time against Luxemburg. Julia said she’d been reading where the people in Germany around our air bases are unhappy with the noise but people around here seem upset because they are having their bases closed. Maybe we should just bring our bases home. Or maybe, Billie said, we should be starting up resorts in our closed airbases for the German people to come over here and enjoy the quiet. WEDNESDAY: The gang was sitt­ ing around the table when the word came through on the radio that John Turner was stepping down as leader of the Liberals. Well, said Hank, with Broadbent going and Turner going that means two down and one to go. THURSDAY: Tim O’Grady said he has been saving electricity and money lately. He’s not watching television, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. If he turns on the news, he hears all the bad news from the federal budget and the predictions about the provincial budget. If he turns on the weather he hears about how unseasonably cold it has been, is being and is going to be. If he turns on the sports he hears the depress­ ing news of the Blue Jays latest disaster. “I can be depressed enough looking out the window so why should I pay money to get depress­ ed.’’ FRIDAY: Well, Julia Flint said, she sees where Prime Minister Mul­ roney didn’t get very far during his trip to Washington trying to con­ vince President Bush they needed an acid rain treaty. Looks like we’ll have to put with losing a lot more lakes and trees, she said. What Mulroney has to do, Hank said, is convince the president of what every farmer knows: if too many trees die you’ll eventually lose the whole Bush. Got a beef? Write us. [But sign it] The Citizen is published weekly in Brussels, Ontario, by North Huron Publishing Company Inc Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $17 OO/yr ($38 00 Foreign) Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited Advertising Deadlines Monday, 2 p.m - Brussels; Monday, 4pm - Blyth We are not responsible for unsolicited newscriptsor photographs Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright Serving Brussels, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Ethel, Londesborough, Walton and surrounding townships. Editors. Publisher, Keith Roulston Advertising Manager, DaveWilliams Production Manager, Jill Roulston Second Class Mail Registration No. 6968